The wife of the Private Secretary[480] came with me from Simla, because in compliment to my weaker health I made shorter marches to the foot of the hills with the last fat baby, Auckland Colvin[481] refusing to sit anywhere but in her lap, and the baby before that refusing to go to sleep unless she slept in the same tent with him, in which there were the three children, two Portuguese Ayahs, and the children’s favourite bearers. No light, because the candles had been sent on by mistake to the next ground; no carpets, because ditto; so that the servants kicked up a dust even in their sleep. Several Pariah dogs were playfully avoiding the Jackals, and about thirty bearers sleeping or smoking on the kynants, or the space between the lining and the outside of the tent. “That I saw,” as Sydney Smith used to say in his charity sermons when he was stating a particular case of distress which he not only never had seen, but never heard of.
This was in our encampment in the hills, when the climate was still delicious. Now the thermometer stands at 90 in the tents, and these unfortunate ladies begin to march at four in the evening. I do not know that the horn signifies, as I defy anybody to sleep in camp more than two hours, and it is being uncommonly acute to snatch at that the first week, till the sentries have learnt to stop the tent-pitchers and camel-drivers from knocking down and packing up all night at unlawful hours. I got Captain Codrington, our Quarter-master, to stay behind last night instead of going on to pitch the advanced camp, that he might see and hear what a quantity of illicit pitching and packing went on, and the result was that he imprisoned 160 tent-pitchers, 56 camels, and removed out of hearing the neighing horses of half the clerks in the public offices, and we all went to sleep for at least half-an-hour, which was very grand. Moreover, it is a rule that nothing should leave the ground till the Governor-General’s carriage goes by, and a gun is fired to announce that highly important event; so to-day this rule was enforced, and in a country of hot dust, which this is, a very good rule it is. But it was funny to see the crowds of old men and beasts the advance guard had stopped, camels and elephants innumerable, our own band, several hundreds of grass-cutters’ ponies laden with grass for sale, palanquins full of small half-caste babies, everybody’s pet dog with their bearers, sofas and arm-chairs. My own tame pheasants in their wooden house I saw in the mêlée.
Marching disagrees so much with me, that by the doctor’s advice, and George’s desire, I leave the camp at Agra, and go straight down to Calcutta, where I hope to be the middle of February. George does not expect to be there before the 1st of April, but I rather hope he will, driven by the heat, cut off some of his tour as the time draws nearer. We have been joined on the march by several officers returning from Cabul, and very flourishing they look, and they cannot make out that their sufferings have been what the papers tried to make out. Captain Dawkins, of Lord Auckland’s Bodyguard, who has been through the campaign with a regiment to which he lawfully belongs, has come back looking fatter than most Falstaffs, and he brought back three of the sheep which he left with us at Ferozepore last year, so that danger of starving was not great.
God bless you, dearest Theresa. This is a very stupid letter, but then it is better than none, which is what I have had from you. And you cannot imagine how hot it is. Your most affectionate
E. EDEN.
CHAPTER XII
1840-1842
Miss Eden to Mr. C. Greville.
BARRACKPORE,
March 13, 1840.
MY DEAR MR. GREVILLE, I give it up; I succumb; I see clearly I was all wrong; generally am, quite mistaken, very sorry, very stupid, etc. But you and every friend I have will do me the justice to say that since the first year we passed here I have mentioned openly that I was regularly twaddling, that I hardly remembered a proper name, and never knew what was meant for jest or earnest. I have written it home twenty times, and it is not a complaint peculiar to me, but common to everybody who has passed a hot season or two in India. Their brains are fairly stewed down into a harmless jelly; and it is a merciful dispensation that, as they have not bodily strength to laugh at a joke, they have not wit left to understand one. I still think that your irony was too fine even for England—I mean, I might have been puzzled there; here, of course, I took it all au pied de la lettre. I should not have minded it so much, if just at the moment when George had hazarded himself in a line that must have ended in success or in impeachment, he had not been turned upon by almost all the Indian authorities, and every paper without exception. I did not care for their opinions, wretched little buzzings of Indian mosquitoes, but when an imposing English hornet came down upon me with the same small Toryisms, as I thought, I could not stand it. However, I see it all clearly now, so let us make it up. “Hostess, I forgive thee: look to thy servants. Wash thy face. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me.”